Case Study: Advantage Services

Founded in 1997 and based out of Fort Lauderdale, Advantage Services is a managed IT services provider for small and medium-sized organizations throughout Florida, but has also carried out work as far afield as Costa Rica and Monaco. From business tech support, cloud services, and web design & development, its team of technicians support their customers’ networks and remotely manage hundreds of IT assets a day. Its business mantra is “Technology should work for you, not the other way around” and it prides itself on finding solutions that work for each customer’s needs and budget.

We love Exclaimer and its Office 365 email signature solution makes our job so much easier.

Keith PerfectDirector of Web Development

A simple solution for a complex problem

Before working with Exclaimer, Advantage Services, as part its web development offering, would find the task of managing their customers’ email signatures a tiresome activity. It would have to program an HTML signature and install it on a customer’s on-premises server. Then, if the customer wanted to update or change their signature, the whole design process would have to begin again. This could literally take hours to complete, which was time better suited to other work tasks. Advantage Services really needed a way to streamline this process and make email signature management easier to control. This was when it was decided a third-party email signature solution was needed.

“We knew of Exclaimer from when it was just building on-premises Exchange software,” said Kevin Perfect, Director of Web Development at Advantage Services. “We had moved all of our infrastructure over to Office 365, so had not thought any of Exclaimer’s solutions would work for us. When we found out that it now had an Office 365 email signature solution, we were very interested in seeing what it could do. At the time, we were using a free editor to build email signature designs, which was hardly ideal, and managing signatures was simply a nightmare. Once we tried what Exclaimer had to offer, we fell in love with it quickly.”

A new partnership begins

Through the positive experience Advantage Services had using Exclaimer Cloud - Signatures for Office 365, it decided it wanted to offer it as a value-added service to its customers. This in turn led to the organization joining the Exclaimer Partner Network. This then allowed it to take advantage of what Exclaimer’s channel partner program had to offer, as well as start to earn good margin on every sale it made. Offering Exclaimer Cloud to its customers was also easy due to the nature of the services Advantage Services offers.

“Many of our customers don’t have in-house IT or marketing departments, so we manage everything for them,” continued Mr Perfect. “Exclaimer Cloud gives us the freedom to easily design and control signatures for everyone, letting us make updates as and when they are needed. This in turn makes our customers’ operations better, meaning they don’t ever have to worry about email signature designs being out-of-date or incorrect.”

At the same time, Mr Perfect found that Exclaimer would provide him with all the help he might need as a partner. “Exclaimer has always been really responsive and our Account Manager is very attentive to our business needs. The fact that Exclaimer has a team working U.S. hours is a big plus point for me, meaning I don’t ever have to worry I won’t get support when I need it.”

Clear benefits for both parties

After a year and a half of being an Exclaimer Partner, Mr Perfect has nothing but praise for the Exclaimer Partner Network and how it has benefitted Advantage Services. “We have never had any problems selling Exclaimer Cloud to our customers and we get to earn decent money on every sale we make,” he said in his closing statement. “It’s easy-to-use and a powerful service that integrates really well with Office 365. The fact that we don’t have to carry out any client-side installations is an added bonus, meaning we can control and manage all signatures from one dedicated web portal. We love Exclaimer and its Office 365 email signature solution makes our job so much easier. We have no intention of using any other service to manage our customers’ email signatures and are very happy to be an Exclaimer Partner.”